In the 1940s, in the run-up to World War II, The German people in large numbers, fell in love with a man we considered deranged, and they considered a savior. Because of it, they explored the depths of depravity, attempting to exterminate a whole people of ancient heritage, and steal their lives and their property. Something like sixty million people died in the Holocaust, we will never know the exact numbers.

The historic Rape of Nanking in 1937 was another mass murder and mass rape committed by Japanese troops against Nanking from December 1937 to January 1938 during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The Japanese followed that up with the Bataan Death March, and appalling treatment of American POWs.

The Russians had a bad time in World War II because Stalin had already executed most of his experienced generals. It took us a long time to learn about The Gulag Archipelago, but eventually, thanks to Alesandr Solzhenitsyn, we did, and more and more has come out since that time to make it clear that communism is and has always been a disaster.

Our educational system is failing abysmally if it does not teach that history to each new generation. Alexandria Ocasia-Cortez is not so much an embarrassment for her views of “Democratic Socialism” as she is an example of the failure of American higher education for her ignorance. Ignorance is not stupidity, but a lack of information. She just doesn’t know what she is talking about.

This is not a small matter. If subsequent generations do not learn the appalling depths to which humanity can sink, then what prevents it from happening again. I have been re-reading Herman Wouk’s The Winds of War, and War and Remembrance, and in the current atmosphere, it is uncomfortable reading.

What appalling ignorance allows people to call a President of the United States — Hitler? To call him a Nazi, calling the political Right Nazis and every other epithet they can think of—because their candidate lost the election. They should have learned through years of education that such epithets were unacceptable anywhere, at any time, for any reason.

It is reported that although 74% of Americans say they support the First Amendment, nobody seems to know what it says. The news media cannot perform its assigned role of struggling to report ever more accurately the news of what has happened, because their preferred candidate lost the election. Some businesses are inserting their politics into their business, something that was customarily unacceptable. It’s still a very bad idea.

Today we have the awful example of Venezuela, once the richest nation in South American due to their huge wealth in oil, now starving. Hugo Chavez, inspired by Castro’s Cuba decided to, under Castro’s guidance, become a communist nation. When Chavez died in 2013 at age 58, he left a fortune estimated at around two billion. That explains a lot of tyranny, does it not?

Venezuela is still oil rich, but they cannot operate the refineries, nor pay to ship the oil anywhere, and the people are slowly starving to death, as are even the animals in the zoo, those that have not yet been eaten.

It wasn’t too long ago that President Obama was saying that manufacturing wasn’t coming back, and there was little hope of getting the economy above 2% growth, times were just different. now. At least that’s how I remember it.

The second quarter GDP came in last Friday at 4.1%, evidence of a steady revitalized economy. The manufacturing sector added 37,000 jobs and has added 327,000 over the last 12 months. That was the highest total 12 month record since April 1995. President Trump said during the campaign that he would “restore manufacturing in the United States.” The number of manufacturing jobs is not yet up to the sectors peak in the late 1970s, but it’s unclear if automation is reducing the numbers needed.

The Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics says a record 155,965,000 people were employed in July, the 11th record-breaker since Trump took office 19 months ago. Over the year, average hourly earnings have increased by 2,7 percent.

That’s a lot of numbers that don’t mean much to most people, but when you have a new higher-paying job, or a raise, and it starts appearing in your paycheck, it’s very nice. Democrats complain bitterly about tax cuts, Nancy Pelosi announced that the first thing the Democrats would do when they get back in power, would be to do away with Trump’s “tax cuts for the rich.” Which is the usual party line for them, but someone who pays a huge amount in taxes gets a bigger amount of money back than does the person who pays only modest taxes. It’s based on percentages. When a business gets a tax cut and keeps more of their own money, they can hire, add facilities, start new divisions and do more to earn more—which ends up in workers’ paychecks.

Lefties are hung up on the idea of making everybody equal, except for themselves, of course, because you need somebody to run things. The Right wants to give everybody the opportunity to make the best of themselves that they are able to do.

“The left objects to “things as they are”and wants things to be “as they might be. That was the Obama’s way of putting it. But what they mean is the perennial Left’s concept . They don’t like human beings as they are and want to “fix” them—humanity needs to be fixed so they are more egalitarian, nice, and don’t disagree with the Left.” A quotation I copied down, but forgot to note who I was quoting.